Barracks worth it?

[couerdelion]

About the combat odds

Well the combat rules are totally new to me. Is there any reference to the complete details. Furthermore, does a depleted unit still fight at its original combat level or is a longbow wounded to 5.0 strength now fighting from a base of 5.0?

Looking at this, it does make me wonder how my fortified warrior in a hill ever managed to defeat those barbarian axemen. Even with +25% against melee and fortified my warriors are at 3.7 against 7.5 basic for the axemen. By my calculations I need to hit them at least 11 times in 13 combat phases with a probability of 1 in 3 of winning each combat. That means I have a 99.98% probability of losing.

Which does really make me question whether these rules are indeed true. I cannot see any way in which a warrior could ever defeat an axeman. Even a 25% fortified warrior with combat 1, +25% v melee, in a walled hill city with culture defence of +60% would only fight at 5.4 vs the axeman of 7.5. I make the odds on the axeman at 93%.

Regarding the question, barracks are very important apart from in a city that will not be building units.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by swat-spas2


My understanding of the 1.52 patch was that combat power and hitpoints were no longer connected. In general damaged units are less effective by the fact that they have been damaged and thus take fewer hits to kill, but not lessened in fighting potency, thus can do far more total damage before dying than in 1.09.

As I understand it, in 1.52 the damage caused when you win the round is based upon your undamaged strength score, but the odds of winning the round are still based upon your reduced-by-prior-damage strength score. Take one horse archer attacking another horse archer. Neither gets defensive bonuses or bonuses against the other. If one is at half strength while the other is full strength, it's effectively a 3 vs 6 on the combat calculation. They still do equal damage to the other if they win a round, but the weaker unit can only take half the hits and is only likely to win one round out of three.

[tetley]

One observation: the later a game gets, the higher return on the barracks. It's a fixed 40 (60?) shields, while your unit costs keep going up. And if your city has the hammers to produce military, then it has the hammers to put up a rax first.

In future games, though, if I start with Horses again I think I'm going to rush 2 Chariots instead of put up rax. I could have rushed my neighbors who only had Warriors, but because I put up rax my neighbors had Archers by the time I reached them. And Chariots sure are cheaper than a Settler.

[mgdpublic]

That little 10% strength manifests itself as a much greater percent win chance. For instance, IIRC, a barb with +10% vs. a barb without has a 67.5% win rate.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: About the combat odds

Originally posted by couerdelion
Well the combat rules are totally new to me. Is there any reference to the complete details. Furthermore, does a depleted unit still fight at its original combat level or is a longbow wounded to 5.0 strength now fighting from a base of 5.0?

Former for patch 1.52, latter for patch 1.09 and the orginal.

Keep in mind that a damaged unit still has less health. The changes introduced in patch 1.52 makes a damaged tank (for example) harder to hit, but not harder to kill.